


Crevasse

by sowell



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU version of "Not Pictured."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crevasse

In the end, it’s easy to get the gun away from Cassidy. His arm lowers woodenly to his side the second he sees Logan stumble. His set face slowly registers horror at the dark red blooming over his brother’s best friend’s chest, as though he hadn’t already single-handedly ended a dozen lives with cold-blooded precision. Logan goes down on one knee, then collapses all the way, his eyes still on hers, still apologizing.  _I’m sorry_ , they’re saying, glazing over with pain and shock. _I’m sorry I couldn’t save you again_.

He doesn’t even resist when she lurches for the gun in his hand, and then she’s pointing at him, screaming at him as Logan lies bleeding on the rooftop and the darkness pounds around her.

He steps from the roof onto the pavement forty stories below before she can pull the fucking trigger.

"Veronica," Logan whispers as she sinks down next to him. His dark eyes are wide and unfocused and as scared as she’s ever seen them. She tries not to look at the amount of blood spread over his t-shirt, at the way it’s pooling under him. She rips off her jacket and balls it up, pressing it against the seeping tear in the center of his chest. He doesn’t even flinch when she puts all her weight on it, and she tells herself that’s a good sign, even though she’s pretty sure it’s not.

She feels him clutching at her arm as she barks half-hysterical orders at the 911 operator, and she locks her fingers through his, determined to ward off the clamminess of his skin with the warmth of her own body. Except she went numb the second her father’s plane exploded in the sky, and for all she knows she could be closer to death than him.

She puts her hand on his face, terrified at how icy it feels. "I’m sorry," he’s saying hoarsely, and "Veronica," again, over and over.

"What are you sorry for, saving my life?" she asks hysterically. Her voice sounds too high and jagged in the middle of this smoothly whirling nightmare, and she can’t feel her legs under her. "I’d be dead if you hadn’t come up here." If he didn’t always come for her.

She’s usually so good under fire, but she doesn’t know what to do. She’s not a doctor, she’s not a soldier; she had to repeatedly nudge herself awake every day in biology, and she didn’t even bother to keep her eyes open in health class. All she remembers is that open wounds need pressure, and that his rapidly cooling skin can’t be a good thing. And she’s never seen so much blood.

"God, I’m so sorry," he mumbles, clutching convulsively at her hand. "I love you so much." The words bubble up in her throat and she gags them back down. She can’t tell him she loves him; if she says it now, it’s like goodbye, and that’s  _not happening_. Her father is dead, and Logan is bleeding out around her, and she can’t make her mind go to a place where he’s dead, too. Where she might have killed him.

So she pushes aside the confessions and tears threatening to spill over and says, "Stop apologizing, you idiot." He chokes a painful, surprised laugh. "The paramedics are on their way. How do you feel?"

"Like John Wayne," he says, slurring faintly, staring up at the sky. "Shot in action." He’s shivering, teeth clicking lightly together, and she realizes he must be in shock.

"I’ll personally deliver your medal of honor to the Neptune Grand," she says. The fear and sorrow are expanding the pressure on her chest to the snapping point.

"Just make sure it’s on my gravestone," he returns, and his pale face is twisted into a stark, resigned smile.

"I will," she says with forced calm, "in fifty years when you actually have to worry about it." She has a meteor lodged in her throat, or maybe a piece of shrapnel from the plane that killed her father. "Just – keep breathing. Don’t you dare stop breathing on me."

"Always giving orders," he says, and she can hear the humor in his voice, swimming beneath the pain. "You can’t control everything."

"I never thought I could," she lies, and she feels the lightest pressure of his fingertips on hers.

His eyes are glistening as he stares into space. "Do you think…do you think Lilly will be waiting for me?"

"Stop it," she says sharply, voice shaking. "You’re not dying." He can’t be dying, because Lilly is dead and Duncan is gone and her father’s body was just painted across the star-lit sky, and Logan is the one who’s supposed to stay. Logan stayed, even when she didn’t know she wanted him there, and she’s not letting go of him when she needs him so desperately. If she believed in God, she would put her hands together in supplication right about now, start making all those worthless deals people make when they’re desperate.

But she doesn’t believe in anything, and she has no one to make deals with.

He’s not answering her, and his eyes have closed. "Logan," she says. His fingers loosen slightly in her grip, and she panics, grabbing his chin and shaking him a few times. His eyelids finally peel up again, find her face.

"Stop shaking me," he moans. "I’m fucking tired."

"Too bad," she says, desperation clawing at her voice. "You can sleep when the paramedics get here, not until then." She presses down harder on her makeshift compress, feels the cloth start to slip as it soaks through with blood. A corner of her mind is still replaying Cassidy Casablancas stepping into nothing, and she thinks that even open air below her has to be better than watching Logan struggle for breath.

"Hard-ass," he says weakly, an attempt at levity woven between the threads of pain and exhaustion in his voice. She watches his chest rise and fall for a few seconds, watches on razor’s edge in case it stops moving altogether. She realizes there are sirens and screams down below, and she can’t tell if it’s been twenty seconds or twenty minutes since Cassidy jumped. The night is glaring around her, expanding with sound and panic, but she can’t feel a thing. She’s locked in glass with Logan’s unmoving body. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him still before.

"I have to be," she says finally. Her breath is coming in funny little hitches in her chest, and she’s not sure if it’s hysteria or tears. "No one else can keep you in line."

He reaches a trembling hand up and puts it against her face, his long fingers flat against her cheek. "I’m sorry I slept with Kendall," he whispers, and she doesn’t even want to consider what it means that he’s asking for forgiveness. His voice is roughening, dampening, like he’s sinking further underwater every second. His eyes look strange; they’re trying to hold onto hers, but they keep slipping away, too tired to focus on one thing.

"I don’t care," she tells him raggedly, catching his hand as it starts to slide off. "I don’t care about that now. You can sleep with her a million times. We can have a threesome, whatever you want. Just please keep breathing."

His mouth turns up at the very corners, a soft, weary smile. "A threesome on the balcony?"

"Yes," she chokes out. "In the shower, in your bed, in public. We’ll have sex everywhere, as long as you're there for it."

He squeezes her hand and his eyes are suddenly glued to her face, to her panic. "You’re the only one," he tells her. His voice is barely a rise of sound. "The only one since Lilly. No one else matters to me." Even his lips are white, and she can see how labored his breathing is, how difficult it is for him to drag in air.

"Please don’t do this," she begs him, and her voice sounds about five years old. "I will not make it without you."

His fingers slowly uncurl around hers, and his eyelids drift shut again. She rattles his shoulders once, but this time he doesn’t snap back. She puts a hand on his chin and sharply shakes his face. He doesn’t open his eyes, and the tears she's been trying to hold back are suddenly streaming down her face.

"Logan," she says, strangled. " _Logan_ , don’t you  _dare_ , you  _asshole_ , I hate you, open your goddamn eyes." She slaps at him, and he still doesn’t respond. She can’t feel the pulse in his wrist anymore, and she blindly fumbles for his carotid artery, feels it lightly thudding. It’s weak and it’s slow and his skin is leeched of color, and she puts her face against the cool hollow of his throat so she doesn’t miss a single heartbeat. She keeps talking, pushing at his shoulders, swearing at him, pleading with him. Words like love and need and promise are tumbling out of her, words she couldn’t say when it would have done any good. Her tears are blurring the details of his face, her nose is too runny to breathe in the scent of him, and she wants to scream because even these little things are being taken from her.

She’s still desperately shaking his shoulders when the paramedics pull her off of him. She sits back on the concrete, trying to wipe the tears away, but they’re coming too fast. She feels the pulse in her palm knocking against the sharp graveled ground, and she thinks she wants to die more than she ever has.

One of the men in the blue hats sinks down in front of her. He’s talking; she needs to move away from the scene, she needs to go to the police station. Is there anyone she can call?

She looks numbly at the paramedic hunched over Logan’s body. She can see his legs, his untied shoes. She looks at the face of the medic in front of her. The little lines of kindness, terrifying creases dug by resignation and regret. The chasm opens under her feet and she’s falling.

_Oh God_.


End file.
